Is It Ever Okay to Laugh About Alzheimer's?
Is It Ever Okay to Laugh About Alzheimer's?
Let me say straightaway that Alzheimer's isn't funny. And yet… there sure are plenty of moments that make you want to laugh. Or me, anyway.
No doubt dementia is a horrible affliction, in the progressive way it erodes the memories and connectedness of someone you love. But it's exactly that long slow progressiveness, the years of everyday living situations, that present so many opportunities for absurdity and comedy —as well as so much need for stress release. And laughter (even cracking a smile) really is a proven stress reliever with healing benefits.
Many people cringe at the idea of finding anything remotely lighthearted about their dementia stories, and I respect that. Humor is a pretty individual taste, too. The black humor batted heartily around in some families (mine) is seen as distastefully verboten in others.
Before you strafe me with indignant comments over daring to suggest that there might just be more pluses than minuses to laughing about Alzheimer's, though, let me point out the following five good reasons to laugh in the face of Alzheimer's or another dementia:
- When you both realize something's funny.
A friend's mother once decorated a Christmas tree…in spoons, forks, and knives she'd meticulously tied ribbons around. The next day she walked in the room and said, "Well who did a crazy thing like that?" "You did, Grandma," piped up my friend's 12-year-old. All three generations had to laugh. Mother and son truly weren't laughing at their elder; they were laughing with her.
Many people with dementia are capable of "getting" that they say curious things and make silly gaffes. They can even make jokes at their own expense (especially if they've always been jolly sorts.) My Dad once told me, "I wish I could forget my bowling scores this week, but so far no such luck!"
- When you need to let off steam.
For some people, jokes are a form of humor that poke harmless fun. There's that old saw about the doctor diagnosing cancer in a patient. "And there's more, I'm afraid. You have Alzheimer's disease." "Well," says the patient cheerfully, "At least I don't have cancer!"
Politically incorrect? Or a "knowing" moment when swapped between, say, two stressed out family caregivers who get the joke because they’re living it.
- When you feel the need to lighten a heavy moment.
Professional caregivers often use little impersonal jokes to distract clients from the indignities of, say, needing help with bathing. There's nothing like unexpected levity to cut tension or alter the mood in a room.
This next example may sound bad written out, but even on her deathbed my mom was making jokes about my dad's memory. Literally, the day she died! Dad has moderate dementia. "At least we'll have our memories," he said to her, sadly. "Not you," she said with a smile breaking through her pain. "You can't remember anything any more!" It sounds cruel, perhaps…but…you had to be there. Lightened the mood in that room.
- When you want to normalize the reality of Alzheimer's.
Poking fun at the things that scare or upset us, or that tend to be hidden in shadow, can be a great way to bring it into the light. At the 2008 Oscars, host Jon Stewart introduced the film "Away From Her," about a woman with early-onset Alzheimer's, for which Julie Christie was nominated, this way: “a film about a woman who forgets her husband — Hillary Clinton calls it the feel good movie of the year.”
- When the absurdity of the whole situation strikes you.
You find your car keys in the freezer. Your wife tries to pay for groceries by pulling out a sanitary pad from her wallet. Your husband spends his afternoons "debating" the man in the hall mirror (the "nice fella" who happens to look exactly like him). Those are the moments that zap you anew, every time, that life is different now, life will never be the same.
Who can blame you for rolling your eyes and snickering to a friend or sibling over the phone about such incidents? "So today Dad answered the door in his underwear again, only to find the minister struggling to maintain her composure (while Dad was as oblivious as if he were wearing his Sunday best!)." Sure it's "telling tales" on Dad. But some situations just beg to be shared, if only as a way for us to say, "See, I'm not crazy…this really is hard work here!"
I took care of my Dad who had been diagnosed with AD. And, although I was in front and center in my career, I knew it was payback time. Right before my dad moved in with me, a dear friend had been going through many troubled times with her husband who also had alzheimers. She shared with me a story that certainly made a huge difference in my abilities to care for my father. She and her husband lived in Northridge. When the huge earthquake hit Northride, their home was hit hard. It hit around 4:00 am. She and her husband awoke to watching their entire bedroom collapse around them as they sat straight in bed holding onto each other. After several moments of watching their precious mementos, lamps, clocks, clothes, chests, tables, chairs, and drawers, falling all around them, my friend looked at her husband. He had a very quizzical look on his face. She wasn't sure how she was going to explain this to him. She found she wouldn't need to. He looked at her after all the noise and commotion, and said, "Now look what you have done!" At that very moment, she knew it was time to laugh. She began laughing, and he began laughing too. She said it brought much comfort in the knowledge, that yes indeed, you must be able to laugh! She vowed, she would always find that time to enjoy laughter with her husband.
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Hugs Joy Golliver
i'm still laughing about hillary and maybe tomorrow
I don't remember!
I forgot to say that my blog, www.KnowItAlz.com shows the lighter (and sometimes downright FUNNY) side of my caring for my Dad who has Alzheimer's and lives with me in NC. If you need a laugh, there are 700 funny stories from the past few years. Thanks for all the HUGS and PRAYERS. I need them! Kathy
Thank you all for sharing what feel like affirmations to me...Ginnysheen, I could almost picture being in your home, with all those wonderful details. And I also really like the idea of laura l's client's pesky friend "Mr. Alzheimer's"...!
Thank you all for sharing what feel like affirmations to me...Ginnysheen, I could almost picture being in your home, with all those wonderful details. And I also really like the idea of laura l's client's pesky friend "Mr. Alzheimer's"...!
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I try to get my wife to laugh every day. I don't always succeed but when I do I know she is not sad and disoriented. I worked with a person years ago who believed that if you could make someone laugh you could make someone think. Perhaps I can't make my wife think, but it pleases me when she is happy. Several months ago, my wife asked me, "Where is Roger?" (that's me) I said, "I'm Roger." She replied, "No you're not. He's much older than you." Intellectually I knew there was humor in that exchange. Emotionally, all I saw was the disease. I have told friends the story. They all laughed of course. And I now can laugh at it too. But it took repeatedly telling the story to overcome my emotion so I could see it intellectually.
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Even off color humor can be funny. We were watching Animal Planet on TV and they were teaching a dog not to hump peoples legs. Before I could change channels, one man in the home said, "That is one horny dog!" Now you have to laugh at that! Another resident where my husband is living now is "working" on a new business idea called House of Joy, for men. She keeps recruting the dining staff. She is serious, but later out of her earing, we all get a kick out of it.
Just saw all my typos. Sorry! Promise not to repost, lmao!
My mom has Alzheimer's, and sometimes the only way my brothers, sister and I can deal with it is to laugh about it. She lives on her own in an apartment with all of us taking turns on coming in twice a day, but it falls the hardest on my oldest brother. He takes care of all the doctor's appointments, gets the scripts, organizes them and makes a list with times and doses so the rest of us give her the right things at the right times, etc. The rest of us take over different aspects of her care, but he's her executor and his name is also on her checks. He's always been the most responsible one (he's the oldest of us six), and he's under such stress that he's been damaging his teeth, grinding them so hard some have cracked. Sometimes, I think the only relief he's got from watching Mom slowly disappear and be replaced with a sometimes mean, hurtful stranger is to talk with others of us on the phone and laugh (painfully, but laugh) about the things that happen. Laughter IS the best medicine; sometimes it's either laugh or cry, and if you cry all the time you can't see what you need to do! We NEED to laugh, not at the person, but at the situation, or we will go mad. Don't worry about what others outside think; do what keeps you sane. If your loved ones could be themselves again, they'd probably laugh about a lot of the stuff too. God bless us all.
This will probably be too long a post, but it's a subject dear to my heart--can't help it. My father is 90, sharp as a tack, but with cardiac problems, and mother 80 with AD, and not a physical problem to speak of--ironic, no? I have eight siblings, half nearby, and half 500 miles away, so lots of phone and email reporting makes laughing over the situation here routine. My family has always been close, regardless of the occasional and inevitable sibling rivalry, but the family sense of humor has always been outrageous, and others often find it appalling when we are howl over something--especially things others don't even discuss. Without laughing at the crazy things, Id be crazier than I am now! My mother, particularly on her better days, still cracks up with the rest of us, even when the joke invloves one of her "adventures". She loves to walk, and the first time she lost her way, she sat down on a corner and teased about her "hitchhiking" ever since, and she looks up at that, shrugs, and tells us that "he was a very nice man." And it was starting to rain!" One day she put the kettle on to boil for tea, and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't. "Um . . . probably because you put it on the knob instead of the burner?" She said, realizing her error, "I did it intentionally to see if it would boil from there. Guess not." Then she cracked up and said. "[Expletive deleted], at least now I can blame all this on the Alzheimer's." My parents both live with me, so this is constant. There's always something silly to laugh about. I ask "Do you remember being queen of the prom?" She says "Really? Was I?" I say "no--see? Your memory is not that bad at all!" She was always a lady as we were growing up, and quite offended when any of us swore or were "vulgar". No more. Now her favorite chore is to load the dishwasher. The five minute job takes her an hour or two, and she swears away the entire time.We laugh when we try to find something in the kitchen, and they are, well . . . just not there. My husband will tell her "treasure hunt time, Mom" and she laughs with him when they find serving bowls in her bedroom closet. She likes to put away her and my father's laundry, but only recognizes her underwear as her own. She doesn't recognize her clothing, brings it to me and says "this must be yours." I say thanks, and that I really like wearing things two sizes too large." We all howl at how often she thanks us for buying new clothes for her. When she has a second glass of wine as we cringe and pray that the rugs will give up the stains, we tell her she should be drinking white, not red! Every time I forget something myself in a standard semi-senior moment, she looks at me, laughs, and tells me that this is divine retribution, and her chance to get even. At a family gathering when sibs were visiting, she, who always said "urination" and "bowel movement" walked into the room and asked if someone would give her a hand because "I have just PISSED all over my pants." We all laughed and yelled "hell no!" She stared us down, and said "I raised you all; that's gratitude for you!" Of course she got the assistance, but it was one of those things where we all laughed together. I took her to change her clothes, and she got weepy. To console her, I said that it even happens to me, so she should just forget about. She said "well, no problem with that, is there?" Then she asked if it really happened to me, and I told her "hell, no! I was just trying to make you feel better." Then we sat there on the bed and laughed til we both cried--the good kind of crying. Sometimes it's funny, often it's not. My father is pushing sainthood for his good humor and patience, but even he will get really silly with her. He'll tell her he always assumed he'd go first, and now wishes he had, look up to the ceiling, roll his eyes, and holler "Take me now!" She fires back "No such luck." I get a good deal of relief from nearby sibs, and even the out-of-towners come often to stay for a few days and "run the show." When she asks why one of her kids hasn't called in weeks (and they really haven't) we just tell her she spoke with them the night before. Every meal is one she's never had before. What is this? The weekly meatloaf or spaghetti. "Fabulous--you should make this again sometime." We discuss the whole thing with her often (no choice--she won't remember the prior conversations), and have explained to her how AD affects the brain at least a thousand times. EVERY time, she says, straightfaced, "thank heavens it doesn't affect my mind." Then she looks over her shoulder and says "It's Alzheimer's you dope! I thought you knew about this kind of thing". And smirks. Her bad times can be very bad--almost intolerable--but knowing that ANYTHING can be funny when we need it to be. It makes a day so much better. My father loves to tell about her confusing her underwear and trying to pull a bra over her legs, at which time she asked in annoyance, doesn't anyone know how to make underear any more? My sweet, loving, helpful sister-in-law's mother, who also had AD, died recently--not funny at all. While we were in their home after the wake, my mother stage-whispered to me "She's better off--she had Alzheimer's, you know." It got very quiet for a moment, and then we ALL broke up. We have a sense of when things will be upsetting to her, and then we laugh among ourselves out of her earshot; pretty easy, as she's also hard of hearing. But . . . Ya gotta laugh! There will be lots of time to cry later, when she's gone and this is all retrospective. But twenty bucks says we'll be laughing again in minutes, and she wouldn't have wanted it to be any other way.
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As co-leader of an Alzheimer's support group, I met a bright spirited woman who would report on the latest glitches caused by her pestiferous friend "Mr. Alzheimer" --I think this gave her some feeling of control over her situation.
My name is Kathy and I am the full time caregiver for my eighty one year-old Dad who has Alzheimer's and lives with me in North Carolina. When my Mom died in 2004 and Dad moved in with me, I had no idea what to do. But day by day, I found ways to cope, and even enjoy having my Dad with me. I feel that laughter is the only thing that is keeping me sane! Please pass this link along to anyone you feel would enjoy it. www.KnowItAlz.com Thanks! Kathy Hatfield
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Thank you for permission to laugh! I always make jokes in stressful situations, and with Mom's dementia, I am often thought disrespectful or morose. My Dad has the patience of a saint, God Bless him, and he and I share giggles and guffaws over some of Mom's behaviors, accusations and distorted memories. He has been accused of not loving her or making fun of her, but that is far from the truth. It is very hard to lose a loved one when they are standing right in front of you. Laughter helps to ease some of the pain of that loss. Thank you again for permission to laugh.
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